Musings of a desert living C-130 pilot. This is not a journal or a news report. Embellishments and half-truths abound (mostly to protect the guilty).

01 April, 2006

Hangar Queen

A hangar queen is a plane with chronic maintenance problems that force it to spend the majority of its time in the hangar. Instead of being a contributor to the unit’s success it is instead a consumer of time and effort for little gain. We have one. While landing yesterday we noticed it had been pulled out of the hangar and was pointed towards our normal approach path. It was an unusual place for a plane to be oriented.

After we landed we noticed that the Iraqi maintainers were pushing it back into the hangar. We asked the US supervisor what was up. He told us that the American advisor had jokingly told his Iraqi counterpart they should “pull the <expletive> out, point it at a flying C-130, turn on the radar and let is see what good planes do.” Apparently, the Iraqi maintenance OIC thought he was serious.